


Of Souls and Mates

by SuperSillyAndDorky06



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Curses, F/M, Felicity Smoak Is His Lobster, Gen, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-07-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 07:58:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4172043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperSillyAndDorky06/pseuds/SuperSillyAndDorky06
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of one-shots. The title says it all. </p><p>1. THE MARK- In a world where everyone is born with a Mark on their wrist, Felicity Smoak is not. She never grows it either.<br/>Soulmate AU. Sort of canon.</p><p>2. THE CURSED- Oliver Queen is born with a curse that kills any woman he is intimate with. Then, he meets Felicity Smoak. Curses AU. Sort of Soulmate-y.<br/>3. THE MARK - PART 2 (Oliver's POV)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. THE MARK

**Author's Note:**

> In a world where everyone is born with a Mark on their wrist, Felicity Smoak is not. She never grows it either.

When Felicity Smoak had cried for the first time upon entering the world, Donna Smoak had cried with her, looking at the miracle she had produced, falling in love with her beautiful baby girl at first sight. She had kissed her tiny little fingers and counted each toe before the haze of motherhood had cleared enough for her to check her wrists for the Mark. 

She hadn’t found any, but her baby had only been seconds old and it would come later. Donna hadn’t given it a second thought. 

                                                                                                          —————————————————————-

When Felicity had been four, she had waddled down on her little feet and in a t-shirt that said “I wuv hugs” to see her mother washing the dishes. Her eyes had gone on the Mark on her mother’s wrist and with an intelligence too much for her tiny brain, she had asked her what it was. 

“It is a soulmate Mark, sweetheart,” he mother had replied, not looking away from the dishes. 

“What’s a souwwate mark?” Felicity had furrowed her brow at trying to pronounce the difficult word. 

Donna had looked at her then and smiled at her toothless daughter. 

“It’s the Mark that only you and the man you are going to spend your life with have, honey.”

Felicity had blinked and looked down at her wrist, staring at the clean patch of skin. “Why don’t I have one?”

Donna had been quiet for a few seconds before pasting a smile on her face. “It will grow soon, honey. You are so young, my little nugget.”

Donna had tickled her daughter, masking her own fears and worries in her giggles.

     

                                                                                                      —————————————————————-

 

Felicity had been seven when she had started noticing it on everyone’s wrist. Some had a weird smudge, some had distinctive designs. She had nothing. Just pale skin with what her mother called veins. 

Her mother had explained to Felicity how the Marks attracted each other and then you could identify your mate with it. Her mom and dad had the same marks and they loved each other and Felicity smiled whenever she saw them. 

The day her daddy had gone somewhere and had never come back, the day Felicity had seen Donna Smoak destroy herself had been the first time in her little, intelligent life that she had been grateful for not having the Mark. Some pains were better left without being felt.

                                                                                                      —————————————————————-

 

Felicity of sixteen was nothing sweet and everything sassy. Having always been ahead of her peers had afforded her a kind of ostracism she had never wanted. Her peers had been cruel in not only picking on her intelligence but on the fact that her wrist was a blank space with nothing to show for her destiny. 

They would rub their own Marks in her face when she passed the corridors, tell her she didn’t have a mate because who would love a freak like her, and though she had accepted that she was not a late bloomer, in fact she wasn’t a bloomer at all, their taunts and words haunted her at night and every time she thought about it, she felt a pang of something akin to pain and loneliness go through her chest. 

She left Vegas and cruelty behind the moment she got accepted in MIT, started wearing heavy bracelets so no one could see her empty wrist and went goth so no one would dare to. 

But she knew. She knew she did not have anyone the universe had for her. And seeing the same knowledge in her mother’s eyes everyday had gotten to be too much.

                                                                                                      —————————————————————-

 

Felicity had met Cooper in her last year of college, at eighteen, since she graduated early. Cooper had been smooth and the first boy to show interest in her. And she knew he had a Mark of his own, but for the first time, she had gone ahead, ignored her conscience that told her to back off, and forgotten her loneliness, if only for a little while. 

But every time she lay on the bed and looked at the ceiling, her wrist would be the lead weight on her gnawing heart.  

                                                                                                      —————————————————————-

 

College and Cooper were two things she had left behind. After everything that happened, she had felt guilty for taking away someone else’s mate away from them. She had become with Cooper what she despised in herself. Never again, she had promised. 

So, she changed looks, changed cities and started working in Queen Consolidated as the quiet, shy nerd who kept to herself and let go of her filter to put off anyone getting close to her. It became a habit. 

                                                                                                      —————————————————————-

 

She had gone in to keep a file in Mr. Steele’s office when she had seen the picture. Oliver Queen had been a constant presence in her life since she had started working in QC. Employees talked about him, his playboy, reckless ways, his untimely death, his everything, all the time. 

Felicity had heard of him but never really paid a lot of attention. And then she had seen the picture of a dead boy and had the same pang she had had her entire life, only worse. 

And she had walked out of the office. 

Felicity Smoak was twenty-one the first time she saw Oliver Queen in a picture.

                                                                                                      —————————————————————-

 

Her wrist had become a topic of discussion in the office as well. She had been in the ladies room washing her hands and the biggest office gossip had been next to her. She had looked at Felicity’s wrist, scandalized and then pitiful, and left. The news had traveled to all the floors in a quick 30 minutes. 

Felicity Smoak had been a nobody by choice till then. Suddenly, she had become the office gossip of the year. 

That was the first time she had cried in the office bathroom.

                                                                                                      —————————————————————-

 

Oliver Queen had come back from the dead like only people on TV shows did. But his return had the entire city buzzing, with curiosity, with interest, even with happiness. 

He was in her office two weeks later. Right in her cubicle. And he looked even better than he had in the picture. 

Felicity had talked. He had smiled. And then he had put a bullet-holed laptop on her table and her eyes had lingered on his wrist. On his Henley covered wrist. 

For the first time in her life, Felicity Smoak had wondered about someone else’s Mark.

                                                                                                      —————————————————————-

 

She had joined what she liked to call Team Arrow in her head (even though Oliver denied it) months ago. She had found in Digg a brother she never had and in Oliver a friend. She had never had those. And she was pretty sure she was also in love with Oliver even though she’d never tell him that. He probably had Gorgeous Laurel’s Mark on his wrist. 

His wrist was a mystery to her. While Oliver paraded shirtless all the time and liked to show off his supremely exquisite body despite the scars, he kept his wrist to himself, always wearing gloves or full sleeves or a watch, hiding it from anyone. She understood that. He was Oliver Queen and his Mark would make the paparazzi go on a manhunt. 

Digg showed her his mark though. And he never asked about the lack of hers. Never had any pity in his eyes, just warm affection. Both of the men did. And that made Felicity more at home in the damp foundry than she ever had anywhere else.

                                                                                                      —————————————————————-

 

Months passed. They got through the Undertaking, Tommy’s death, Sara’s return from the dead, Slade’s return from the dead, so much, as a team. Roy joined in and he became another man in her life who never questioned her lack of mark and made sassy comments to people who even looked at it. 

Sara used to look at her wrist a lot, with a kind of speculation in her eyes. Felicity never understood since her wrist had never inspired that particular reaction. 

Barry had been a breath of fresh air with his own Mark. He had also been the first person to ask her outright about it with curiosity more than anything else. She had really appreciated that. And told him what she had known for her entire life. What she hadn’t told him was what she had only known for a few months. Oliver.

                                                                                                      —————————————————————-

 

She sometimes caught Oliver looking at her wrist when she would be typing and he’d look away as soon as she caught him. She never understood that either. 

Oliver liked to touch her. She had noticed that. He was never as tactile with anyone as he would be with her. Soft smiles, touches on all platonic places. Those became their thing before she had even realized. 

Oliver getting back with Sara had hurt, a lot. She had known she didn’t have any right to him and his Mark had to be destined for one Lance sister or the other. But Sara had been genuinely nice and super amazing and even though looking at the two of them crushed her heart a little every time, she never hated either of them. She could not. Not for finding in each other what she could not in anyone.

                                                                                                      —————————————————————-

 

The touches had stopped since Sara came. Felicity had kept a smile on her face. 

Digg had noticed. Felicity had kept a bigger smile on her face. 

Her Mark, lack of it, had become her curse. 

                                                                                                      —————————————————————-

 

It had been after Slade, after Sara, after the fake ‘I love you’, that the touches had started again. It had been after this, on a night in the foundry, when the team had been having drinks and playing truth and dare childishly, just having a quiet night in, when things had changed. 

The bottle had stopped at Felicity and she had opted for truth. Roy had, for the first time, asked her why she didn’t have the Mark. Oliver had growled a low “Roy” and Felicity had sighed. 

“I don’t have a soulmate, Roy,” she had said softly, the truth so deep inside her bones, as she looked at the bottle on the ground. Then, she had laughed it off. “I’ll probably be a really old cat lady. Except I am allergic to cats.”

They had continued the game for a little while but Felicity had been out of it. So, she had excused herself with a smile and picked up her bag, leaving. 

She had been trying to control her breathing, walking to her car, when she had heard Oliver jog up to her. She had turned with a smile on her face but it had frozen at the intent, focused look in his eyes as he strode up to her. 

He had stepped right in to her personal space, gripped her face in his huge palms and slanted his mouth over hers with a vigor she had never felt from him. He had kissed her with a ferocity that made her toes curl and her stomach fall to her knees, her entire body shaking as their mouths meshed and tongues entwined. 

Oliver had pulled back after long moments of kissing her, sipping from her like she was all the nectar he needed to live, and looked down at her with those beautiful blue, blue eyes. 

“Pull my sleeve down, Felicity,” he had said in his soft, husky voice, the one he only used with her. 

Her heart had stopped. Her eyes had widened and she had tried to pull away. Oliver seriously could not be that cruel, not after kissing her like that, not after everything. 

He had held her in place, his eyes intent. “Pull my sleeve down,” he had commanded again.

Mouth trembling, the pain filling her, she had closed her eyes and tugged at his sleeve, feeling the material slip up his muscular forearm, and stopped, her heart hammering so loudly she could feel it in her ears. 

“Look at it, Felicity,” Oliver had ordered in that same voice, still holding on to her face. 

Mustering all the courage, she had opened her eyes to look at his earnest ones and let them flicker to his exposed wrist. And everything in her body had stilled. 

Oliver’s wrist had been blank. As blank as hers. No smudge, no shape. Nothing. Just flesh and skin and veins. 

Stunned, she had looked back at him, to see him smiling softly at her. 

“I don’t understand,” she had stuttered. Wasn’t he supposed to have Gorgeous Laurel’s Mark? Or Sara’s? Anyone’s?

Oliver had touched his forehead to hers, his thumbs moving on her cheeks. 

“This is my Mark, Felicity,” he had whispered. “Just you.”

And she had closed her eyes, feeling the years of stigma and pain flow out finally, understanding finally as she stood there with the man she had loved for so long, the man who was her hero in every sense of the word, saving her yet again from herself. She understood. 

Sometimes, you didn’t need the Mark to find your soulmate.

Sometimes, they just were.


	2. THE CURSED

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver Queen is born with a curse that kills women he gets intimate with. Then, he meets Felicity Smoak.

Their world was a strange one. Curses ran amok here in the dark of the night and a curse, mostly mild, befell everyone at least once in their lifetimes.

Oliver Queen, in such a world, was the curse itself.

His mother had killed his father in self-defense when she had been carrying him in her womb. But the universe had not seen the self defense, only the murder. And the sins of the mother became the son’s even before he was born. They had befallen him and he had been born different, with a curse not over, but inside his very flesh.

He had never known about it.

Oliver had been 11 the first time he had kissed a girl. It had been a dare by his best friend and he had gone ahead, with a cocky attitude and a racing heart, to get his first ever kiss from the girl. The moment his lips had touched hers, her body had locked and she had fainted with a gasp, right before Oliver, crumpling to the ground in a heap. Oliver had been stunned and speechless. He had run home and stared at himself in the mirror, unable to comprehend the events.

He had put them down to nothing but a bad coincidence and gone ahead, innocent. But he did not kiss any girls for a long time. Maybe, in retrospect he could see, that a part of him had always known, always understood the horror that lived inside him.

* * *

It had been on a Tuesday when he was 14 when it happened again. In the exact same manner. 

His sister, Thea, had been sleeping when he had gone to see his mother that night and demand answers. That was the night Moira Queen had sat him down and told him about the past, told him about his history, told him about the curse.

* * *

The curse that was his very own demon. The more it was fed, the more powerful it became. And as Oliver grew, and more time passed, the more he fed it recklessly, sometimes to tempt fate, to push boundaries, to rebel, and sometimes because he could not control his urges.

The curse made Oliver desire. And his desire was the curse.

The desire ran like a fever in his blood, growing hotter the more he resisted it. But it was a lethal fever, a lethal burn that would scorch any girl who took the brunt of his desire. In the beginning, girls only fainted. Oliver had tried to control it but could not, but as the curse grew within him, so did its intensity. The last girl he had been frisky with, at 18, ended up in a coma.

And Oliver knew, in that moment, he would have to remove himself from the world before he hurt another soul. 

He left the city, his mother and his sister, who was actually his half sister but he loved her more than his own life, to go to an island. He opted to leave civilization behind and go to a place where he could hurt no one, and learn to control the curse that lived inside him, festering like an infected wound on an open gash.

He left.

He stayed away. 

He learned. And after five years, it was time to return.

* * *

The curse inside him was a caged beast now. He had put it in, locked the gates but he felt the beast clawing right under his skin, wanting escape, wanting him to unleash it. But Oliver had the key to that lock now. And he was not opening it again.

* * *

He met Felicity Smoak on a Tuesday afternoon. 

She had been on her way to her cubicle and he had been coming down from seeing his mother and they had, very typically, collided. And then she had started talking and Oliver had listened, fascinated by how someone could speak so fast and insert so many innuendos in one breath. It had been a month at that point since his return and while he had been tempted in that month, the beast had been tempted in that month, he had managed to rein it in. He had held himself back from the temptation.

But Felicity Smoak had not tempted him. She had  _soothed_  him.

And that had scared Oliver more than anything else.

* * *

He started seeking her out over the weeks, her soothing brightness something he had never allowed inside before. The beast calmed in her presence. The clawing hunger was fed with her smiles. So, Oliver sought her out even more. But he always minded the line never to cross. 

And the more he knew her, the more she soothed him, the more the lines blurred, with gentle touches on the shoulders and arms and hands that he contented himself with. 

* * *

Women had always been attracted to him but never understood why he lived like a monk. He had never cared to explain. For the first time, he did but he reined that in too. Weeks passed, and people around him relaxed, seeing him so calm and collected. 

Until she went missing. 

And he searched and searched for her. His beast became wilder than it had ever been, his skin burned without her to soothe it. And he had never felt more frantic than he did in that moment. 

For six long, torturous hours no one found her. And then she walked into her apartment (which he had broken into) casually like he had not spent those six hours on the verge of insanity, and looked at him in surprise. 

And they fought.

Oliver knew in that moment how truly screwed he was. 

He knew in that moment he had never wanted to kiss a woman more in his life, and not because of desire but pure, unadulterated  _need_.

And then, for the first time in his life, he saw a woman walk up to him, let her take his face in her hands as she saw something in his face, and let her rise on her toes. 

Oliver stood frozen, the tug inside him between the beast and the man so acute it was agony, the need to keep her safe and the need to taste her so wanton it made him ache. 

Her lips touched his. 

He clenched his fists and closed his eyes, his heart breaking, his hatred for his own self so strong in that moment that he could have burned from it. 

He braced himself, waiting for her to freeze, dreading the moment she would stiffen. She pulled back and he felt his chest tighten in the pain he knew he would face as soon as his eyes opened. 

“Not to rain on your broody parade, but I’d really appreciate if you kissed me back.”

Her normal, wry tone had his eyes flying open to check her. And he frowned. 

She had touched him and she was unharmed? 

He blinked at her in confusion as she smiled softly at him, shrugging. “I am cursed too.”

He stayed silent, waiting, dreading the hope welling in him only to have it squashed down. 

“What is your curse?” he finally asked in a hoarse voice when she stayed quiet. 

She shrugged again. “I can feel other curses. It’s not pretty.”

And that did not clarify why she was not on the floor. 

She sighed, as though hearing his unasked question. “I have known all along what your curse is, Oliver. I can feel it. That’s my curse.”

“But?”

“But I cannot be affected by the curses I feel.”

A shuddering breath left him before he could keep it in and he felt his entire body shake as she held his face. Everything fell into place. That was why she could soothe him. 

Oliver took a hold of her face and pressed their foreheads together, just breathing her in, feeling the moisture threatening his eyes. So long. For so, so long.

He pressed their lips together and for the first time in his entire life, he let the beast out. 

He  _kissed._  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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	3. THE MARK - PART 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a world where everyone is born with a Mark upon their wrists, Oliver Queen isn’t.

Moira Queen had never found her soulmate. She had looked at her wrist for every day of her life, looking at the tiny smudge there, but never found the man who reflected it. She had lived for two years married to a man who bore someone else’s smudge on his wrist. She had accepted it. 

So when she her son was born, her Oliver, she had checked his wrist for the Mark and closed her eyes upon not finding any, closing her fingers around his little, blank wrist, vowing that the society would not burden him with what she endured. 

* * *

Oliver was 4 when he first saw the little scar on Tommy’s wrist at a big party that his mom made him dress up for. He made fun of it but then Raisa bribed him with ice-cream and, for the moment, that scar on Tommy’s wrist was forgotten.

* * *

At 7, Oliver was in the routine of getting dressed every morning, even though it would all be dirty by the evening. His mother always sighed after he got back from playing with Tommy but her small smile made him, even as a child, understand that he could get away with it. Worst case circumstance, he went for a hug. 

* * *

It was at 9, when his mom sat down with him one night, tucking him in bed instead of Raisa, when things changed slightly for him. Tommy’s mom had just gone to heaven and seeing his best friend cry had made Oliver cry too. And his mom had always given them so much food. 

Oliver, sad as he was, listened as his mom told him news. She told him how he would be getting a sister in a few months and Oliver, though surprised, felt happy. 

* * *

It was the day Thea was born and placed in his arms, tiny and so, so small, that he felt something shift inside him. Holding her carefully while his mom rested and dad spoke to the doctor, Oliver looked down at his baby sister he would protect from everyone. He was her big brother, after all. He looked at her wrinkled, pink face and her tiny fingers when his eyes landed upon her wrist and he saw a small smudge on it. 

That day, holding Thea, for the first time, Oliver realized he did not have the smudge everyone else did. 

* * *

Wearing a watch or full sleeved shirts had been a part of his life since he could remember. His mom finally explained to him one night why it was so important that no one ever should see his wrist. He was Oliver Queen, son of billionaire Robert Queen and heir to the Queen empire. The media would love to get a glimpse of his wrist and no one, apart from her and him, should ever come to know of the blank slate that was his wrist. 

Oliver was explained all this at 11. But he agreed to it for Thea. She mattered. 

* * *

Oliver at 13 realized, after observing every person around him flaunt their wrists and show their Marks to everyone, that it was perhaps better for him never to. Also, because not having a Mark meant he was free to kiss any girl he liked. And that’s exactly what he did. After all, wasn’t that what universe wanted him to do?

* * *

By the time he was 15, Oliver was raging with hormones and high on life. He was rich, he was good looking and his conscience was clean of any soulmate waiting for him. 

Thea had become a nuisance by then, always chasing after him and Tommy which was not very conducive to their wild escapades that were just beginning.

At 15, Oliver had sex for the first time, after having a lot of experience with everything else. The girl tried the entire time to get him to take his watch off. It stayed. But the slight twinge of guilt didn’t.

* * *

Last year of high school, especially the private school that Tommy and he went to, was explosive. They had done girls, mild drugs, drinks, wild parties, even jail, till then. His parents were fed up of his behavior, especially his father. His mom just looked sad after a point. Thea, though, no matter what he did, still looked at him with nothing but pure love. 

That was also the year he met Laurel Lance, ironically a cop’s daughter, and Sara’s sister. They started hanging out together, and he realized that Laurel did not do anything that he did. She was focused and stubborn. 

It was after their first kiss, when he was sitting with Tommy that night, sharing a beer, that Tommy looked at him seriously and asked him, for the first time, about his Mark. 

That was the first time that Oliver lied to Tommy. 

* * *

Everyone got into their colleges of choice after graduation. Oliver just went where Tommy did. And dropped out in a few months because he was bored. He got admitted again, because his father was Robert Queen, and he dropped out again. And the cycle went on two more times. 

Laurel, his girlfriend of two years that he had cheated upon more times than he could remember, was angry and hurt by his behavior. Not only by this, but his refusal to show her his wrist even after she insisted, demanded and seduced him. He never did. She tried force and for the first time, she pissed him off royally. She broke up with him almost every night and they patched up by morning. 

But he was a free man. His wrist was a blank space. And though that thought made him happy most days, some nights, he would stare at his ceiling, wondering what it felt like knowing universe had someone meant solely for you. 

He just figured he was too much of a screw up for universe to bet on him. 

* * *

It was the day Laurel all but asked him to move in with her that shit became real. Till that point, Laurel had just been his intelligent girlfriend to whom he had no commitment whatsoever. And because his panicked mind apparently put two and two together really fast, looking at Laurel’s wrist, he knew he had seen her Mark somewhere else. On Tommy. 

And Oliver screwed up a lot of things, but his friendship with Tommy stumped everything else. So, he called Sara, with whom he had been flirting for weeks, and invited her to the boat trip. 

He knew it would be the end of his relationship with Laurel. He honestly did not care at that moment. 

* * *

Everything went to hell after the boat went down. He had gone to hell. In a fortnight, Oliver had grown up more than he had in the last decade. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw his father shoot himself. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Sara being pulled under, heard her screams, felt the cold water hit him. 

The island, which he had thought would be a sanctuary, became his custom made nightmare. And the path he was walking on slowly, he knew he was not going to end up in a good place. 

* * *

It was the first time Slade was training him with batons while Shado was hunting that Oliver saw his Mark. Rough, black. And he discovered that same Mark on Shado the first time they had sex. 

After a year on the cold, freezing island, a year of scars and pain and just running for their lives, after a year of not knowing if he would ever even return home to Thea and Laurel, Oliver did not care enough for anything else but that momentary pleasure. 

It was after meeting Sara and Shado’s murder that things changed. Slade strung him up, high on Mirakuru, baring his torso for torture, and for the first time, someone else saw his blank wrist. 

And Oliver couldn’t care for anything but the electric shocks running through his body. 

* * *

Oliver returned home, after five years away. Five years of becoming a cold-blooded killer of hundreds, five years of mastering torture- both receiving and giving it, five years in which he had returned home for one brief moment. Five years of pain and brutality and darkness that had consumed him. He returned with a mission, with skills, with control. He returned a changed man, a monster. 

And he could finally understand why the universe had never intended anyone for him. 

* * *

Blue walls. Pink shirt. Red pen. 

His black and white world burst with color one day in his own office building. Felicity Smoak. 

She talked. And talked some more. Then bit her lush pink lips. Then called him out on his excuse without uttering a word. 

For the first time in years, Oliver felt his cheek muscles lift naturally. And while she talked and explained things, Oliver covertly tried to look at her wrist but couldn’t since her pink shirt covered them. 

He wondered, leaving the office, if she knew what her name meant.

* * *

He kept seeking her out. Digg joined the mission, became his brother. Then she joined the mission, became not just his partner but a small bright spot in the dark foundry. She’d make innuendos unintentionally, stare at him unabashedly, talk unreservedly. And everything she was, genius as she was, made him start looking forward to something  _good_  every morning, for the first time in years. 

* * *

The same week that Oliver saved the boy, Roy, and realized he shared Thea’s Mark, he also realized that Laurel and Tommy had found each other and there was no reason for him to interfere. 

It was the same week that Felicity wore a short sleeved top for the first time and Oliver got a good look at her wrist. 

And he could not remember being more  _stunned_  in his  _entire_  life. 

Her wrist was blank, like his. She was an anomaly, like him.

* * *

Tommy died. Oliver ran. Felicity and Digg brought him back. 

Things changed- in the city, between them. While they were more cohesive as a team now, with him running the company (admittedly the credit to most of which went to Felicity), and he was trying a different way, Oliver became aware that Felicity did not know about his lack of Mark. 

* * *

He looked at her wrist sometimes when she wasn’t looking, trying to understand how it was possible. He sated himself with touching her, sometimes consciously, sometimes not. She returned it. And he could feel it changing, feel  _them_  changing, even when nothing really changed at all. 

* * *

Sara returned. Isabel happened. The Count got her. 

And that day, when the line between her life and death was a syringe a second away from her skin, Oliver truly realized, that even though the universe did not intend anyone for him, and even though he was incapable of being in any relationship, she could  _not_  die. 

He realized the void on his wrist would be nothing compared to the void without her.

* * *

He still got with Sara, knowing it made Felicity feel worse than he did when Barry came around. He stopped touching her, or tried to. It was the best way for all of them. 

When Sara asked him about it one night, about Felicity’s blank wrist, not knowing that Oliver shared it, he just shrugged it away, telling her not to speculate and focus on her Mark with Nyssa.  

That did not stop him from speculating. Almost a year and he still did not know why they were the way they were. 

* * *

Slade knew. The moment he saw Felicity’s wrist he knew. And he taunted Oliver with it the chance he got. That was what made him believe he got the right woman finally. A blank wrist.

Then Oliver knew too.

Standing on that beach, he accepted what he had understood in that moment in the clock-tower. He remembered, with sudden clarity, his mother’s words to him after she had met Felicity at their home. 

_“How many people have you met in your life Oliver?”_

_He had stayed silent. Too many._

_“And how many of them had no Mark?”_

Standing on that beach, Oliver touched her again.  _Their_  touch.   

* * *

On a quiet night in the foundry, when the team had been having drinks and playing truth and dare childishly, just having a quiet night in, things had changed. The bottle had stopped at Felicity and she had opted for truth. Roy had, for the first time in Oliver’s knowledge, asked her why she didn’t have the Mark. 

Oliver growled a low “Roy”, watching Felicity closely as she sighed and spoke softly, staring at the ground. 

“I don’t have a soulmate, Roy.” 

Her answer  _stunned_  him. She spoke something else, but Oliver could not hear it, his blood rushing and pulse pounding in his ears as he looked at her sad face, looking so much older than she was at the moment, understanding how truly she believed that. 

He had never even thought, in his wildest dreams, that a bright woman like her would truly believe she did not have a soulmate, that she was destined to be alone. And in that moment, he realized what a complete idiot he had been, trying to take it slow. 

The sadness in her eyes as she picked up her bag did not warrant slow. It warranted the truth. 

So, he ran after her when she left, his heart pounding because for the first time, Oliver accepted the pattern of flesh and veins and skin over his wrist, because they were  _hers_. Just as he was.  

He saw her smile as she saw him, and blink in surprise when he stepped closer than he had ever been into her personal space. He heard her soft gasp as he settled his mouth over hers and unleashed everything,  _everything,_  in that one kiss. 

And kissing her finally, he felt that tension which had been building for two years, for their entire lives, ease from his gut. He felt her kiss him back, return the ferocity of his mouth like only she could, letting her softness pour into it, because they were past sophistication. They were raw, so, so primal. 

He kissed her some more, to his heart’s content, feeling the lush lips that had fascinated him against his, feeling the essence of her against him, feeling her heart beat and throb in her pulse, feeling their mouths mesh and tongues entwine. 

He kissed her. Then he pulled back, and demanded her to see his wrist. She was going to become the only person he showed his wrist to on his own. He made her finally look, letting his clean skin speak everything he could not, letting this blank flesh tell her everything he felt, knowing she would understand, like she always did.

Tears escaped her eyes as she looked at him, with so much hope and so much  _something_  that was  _just them_. Her mouth trembled as she pulled him closer, because he knew she understood it, just as he did, in that moment. 

Sometimes, you didn’t need the Mark to find your soulmate.

Sometimes, they just were.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out my other works if you liked this. 
> 
> Come say Hi to me on
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> TUMBLR : [supersillyanddorky06.tumblr.com](http://supersillyanddorky06.tumblr.com/)  
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**Author's Note:**

> Check out my other works if you liked this. 
> 
> Come say Hi to me on
> 
> TUMBLR : [supersillyanddorky06.tumblr.com](http://supersillyanddorky06.tumblr.com/)  
> TWITTER : [@dorky06](http://twitter.com/dorky06/)


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